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"Zack and Miri" will make you laugh

The Screening Room
Published by What's Up Arts and Entertainment
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Some people pick up a second job. Others sell plasma. But for down-and-outsters Zack and Miri there’s just one answer to surviving the tanking economy and one answer only: porn.
(Warning: The contents of The Screening Room herein contain references to some very adult material.)
Meet Zack Brown (Seth Rogen). He’s in the coffee business, plays on the Monroeville Zombies hockey team and learned quickly at the start of Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri make a porno” that hand warmers aren’t meant to be used in a person’s pants.
Zack lives with Miri Linky (Elizabeth Banks). Miri owns the world’s largest collection of handmade scarves, works in retail and sports the occasional pair of granny panties - as is, she says, a woman’s right.
He’s Harry (Er… hairy), she’s Sally, they met in the first grade and they’ve been platonic best friends ever since.
But when their water, heat and power are turned off thanks to some late bill payments, the two decide it’s time to invest in a good, old fashioned skin flick in order to survive the cold Pennsylvania winter. Taking a cue from Brandon St. Randy (Justin Long), the slicked back gay adult film star boyfriend of an old high school classmate, Zack and Miri hold their own set of auditions, coerce Zack’s coworker Delaney (Craig Robinson, better known as the warehouse guy from NBC’s “The Office”) into producing and come up with the perfect name: “Star Whores.” (Yes, even the light sabers are in full phallic form.)
But when a local wrecking company wreaks havoc on their sets, the motley film crew must work with what they’ve got: a coffeehouse, a security cam and, for better or worse, their birthday suits. Thus is born a film which bears a title I cannot write in this column, but let’s just say it’s full of “sexpressos” and “whoristas” getting to know one another under a titillating shower of coffee beans.
But not all is fair in love and porn.
When Zack and Miri’s sex scene brings about some true romantic feelings, the pair do what any healthy twenty-somethings would: refuse to acknowledge it and let the awkward elephant in the room grow to the size of the Sears Tower.
What follows is what Smith ("Clerks," "Chasing Amy") portrays best: raunchy, offensive dialogue catering to a tenderhearted slacker romance. And "Zack and Miri" pulls if off with R-rated perfection. (Before it's release, the film almost took an NC-17 tag, but the rating was appealed.)
Rogen, a graduate of the Judd Apatow University for Astronomical Comedic Success, is lispy and adorable; he lends the film his usual schlepy stoner charm. The refined Banks bears her comedic chops well, and the chemistry between the two is palpable despite their mismatched appearances. "Zack and Miri" also stars Jason Mewes, who gives a full-frontal performance without batting an eye, and Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) as Miri's old high school crush. But the best of the side shows is Long, who delivers his lines with an uproariously low, oily, robotic monotone.
The plotline is thin as the ice on the Monroeville streets and "Zack and Miri" doesn't come without it's share of shocks and bathroom humor (how many other films include a lovelorn monologue during which the recipient is sitting on the toilet?), but its few shortcomings are lost in a production that warms its audience from the inside out. Full of honesty and laughs, "Zack and Miri" at it's simplest is about what happens when two friends set out to have sex and end up making love.

Live - and vote - deliberately

Odds and Bookends
Published by the North Kitsap Herald
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The dark blue sign read "Bush" in bold white letters, and under it "Cheney" in a finer print. It had the usual array of red stars and stripes, and probably an elephant on it somewhere; I can't quite remember. But I do recall where it hung: above the door of my Warren Hall dorm room, at Whitworth University, circa 2004.
My newly minted roommate and I had gone so far as to join the student Republican chapter on campus. The sign was swag, offered in exchange for convincing our friends to vote, like us, for the GOP incumbent. (In a recent Google search to find an image of the sign, I only ran across spoofs bearing impeachment jokes and slogans like "Commander 'n thief.")
That was the first presidential election during which I was old enough to vote; the race between Barack Obama and John McCain will be my second.
In fact, I've already voted, and placed a big, bold mark next to the Obama-Biden box. But I'm not here to tell you who to vote for.
I'm writing this to tell you about four teens I met Monday while waiting to talk with gubernatorial incumbent Christine Gregoire outside Poulsbo's city hall. These students were in search of extra credit via a signature from the governor. When I asked who they would vote for were they of age, I got smiles and shrugs. Three guessed they might cast ballots for Dino Rossi, one said he'd pull for Gregoire because his parents are doing the same.
It's likely in the next four years those teens, like I eventually did, will come to form individual opinions on the vast, hurling vortex of politics. College does, after all, make you prone to new ideas and an invaluable education. (OK, my student loan statements put a very clear value on my education. You catch my drift.)
But here is my hope for these teens. When they turn 18, when they graduate from college at 22, when they find themselves choosing between candidates be it for president or the city council, I hope this: that they can turn to their parents and discuss. And I hope their parents, in return, can hold their end of the conversation.
You see, my mom is a very smart person. She's raised three kids, works in the medical field and is arguably the best friend I've ever had.
And she's voting for McCain.
I won't tell you our family doesn't debate it. I won't say we don't hash out the pro life vs. pro choice stance or it's place in the election. I won't lie and say we haven't discussed the idea of health care and the rights of any sick person to be taken care of, despite their financial situation. I won't even say we haven't breached the notion of Obama's perceived dilemmatic religious background, Palin's questionable geographical knowhow or McCain's age.
Because we have. We've debated, discussed, gotten heated, raised our voices and shouted about it all. But here's the thing: My mom may be voting for a party with which I no longer identify, but that doesn't matter as much as the fact that she's voting. So is my dad.
And while we may disagree, my parents are still setting an incredible example. Luckier even than I are my younger brothers, who will remember these knowledgeable family discussions when they're old enough to have political say.
So my point in this narrative is this: No matter who you vote for, no matter your stance on saving the environment, US dependency on oil, the job market or the war in Iraq, please vote. Do it deliberately, and with thought. Because, as they say, your vote is your voice. And it's your tax dollar. And it's your future. Not just yours, but a whole generation to come. And they're looking to you to learn how to do it.

You say 'Saw,' I say seen it

The Screening Room
Published by What's Up Arts and Entertainment

It’s a mine field of bad films out there troops, and we at What's Up certainly don't want you wasting your Halloween night on the likes of "Man-Thing." So we've put together a small and by no means comprehensive guide to get the cinematically inclined through the spooky season. Here’s what’s what:

The Motion Ickness Factor



If you're looking to hit the theaters this weekend for a fright, your best bet is going to be "Quarantine," a rocky, hand-held camera version of what happens when inhabitants of a barricaded apartment building one by one turn rabid.
The movie itself is a spawn of the "Blair Witch" era (of which there are many; really now, if you haven't seen it or a sequel or spoof, it's time to put down the can of beans and step away from the bunker.) A news crew follows its fire fighter subjects into what should have been a standard assistance call, but finds instead humans with a quickly advancing strain of I'm-going-to-eat-you-alive disease. "Quarantine" pulls off a decent approach and execution, though at times it dabbles too heavily with out-of-focus shots, but the real tragedy is its plot-line limitations. You know what a movie called "Quarantine" will be about before it begins, and only the first few raging, beady-eyed neighbors popping out of nowhere get the starts. The movie ends quickly — and mercifully it waits to go to night vision mode until roughly 80 minutes in — but for your theater fun it's worth the short expenditure of time.


Still looking for an excuse to take that Dramamine? Probably the highest budget motion sickness production out there is "Cloverfield," J.J. Abrams' disaster flick about a deep-sea something-or-other that destroys New York City. There is blood. There is gore. There are weird, spidery creatures that attack socialites in the dark, and it's all captured by Joe Videocam, who happens to offer a rather funny monologic narrative. This one's already on Blockbuster's shelves, but if you haven't seen it, give it a go.

Sick in the head


Sometimes there's just nothing better (or more disturbing?) than watching the mental breakdown of characters on screen. A standard favorite: "Se7en," a ruse from the brain of David Fincher ("Fight Club") that's all about trickery, sin and crime-solving. "Se7en" follows cops David Mills (Brad Pitt) and William Somerson (Morgan Freeman) as they search out a surprise-identity serial killer. After Mills' wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) is put, er... in jeopardy, the audience watches Mills make a choice that will change the rest of his life, and possibly prove the killer's agenda. Be prepared to mimic Pitt's "What's in the box?" line long after the movie is over.
Others in this category deserving of note: classics "The Shining" and "Silence of the Lambs," and while we're going old school, check out oldies but goodies "Rosemary's Baby" and "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

I’ll haunt you for that


They're here. OK, it's also slightly ancient by now, by there may not be anything lie Spielberg's 1982 "Poltergeist" ... except "Poltergiest II" and "Poltergeist III." But the original that spawned even a TV series is still topnotch. The movie depicts a suburban family living in a ghost-infested house. What first appears to be a visit from friendly Casper soon turns ugly, leading to the kidnapping of the family's youngest member and totally ruining its lawn. "Poltergeist" made TV screen static scary long before "The Ring." Other good hauntings include "The Changeling" (1980) and either version of "The Amityville Horror."

Jeepers Creatures

No creepy compilation would be complete without word from Stephen King, who makes it on the list with 2007's "The Mist." Better than you'd think, this movie shows a group of townsfolk trying to survive an enigmatic mist that envelopes their homes and brings with it giant insects which are really, really gross. The giant insects are just the start of large-scale creatures that are nearly as frightening as the global warming crisis, and the shockingly dramatic ending of this film will stick with you for a while. (I mean it. Color me traumatized.) Other creature creations include "The Thing" and "The Brood."

Low voltage, please


Thanks to the brilliantly zany mind of Tim Burton, there are plenty of Halloweenish movies that don't rely on your gag reflex to make a point. A personal, family-friendly fave: "Beetlejuice," a 1988 movie about two ghosts trying to rid their home of live humans. Nothing's as priceless as the moment a noosed Geena Davis pulls the flesh right off her face, eyes popping comically out in an attempt to be scary. This Burton-meets-claymation adventure stars Michael Keaton in the wacky, electrified role of Betelgeuse, but most of Burton's All Hallow's Eve best feature Johnny Depp (see: "Sleepy Hollow," "Edward Scissorhands" and "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," all excellent seasonal choices for an enjoyably tame evening.)

The blog on Bones: The He in the She (S4, Ep6)

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It isn’t often a television show creates for itself the opportunity to offend both the transsexual community and the Pope, all in one episode.

But Bones did just that, dabbling in topics widely considered touchy without skipping a beat. Not to worry, the show’s take on gender issues sent a positive message, despite the Tevye-style penchant of its leading man to partake in pro-traditional stumping. How the Pope would feel about it, I wouldn’t presume to know. (see line: “One pastor gets her teeth whitened and the other drinks wine on Sunday mornings and tells everyone that it’s been miraculously transformed into blood. Which of those is more outlandish?”)

Controversies aside, two potheads discover the corps du jour, a legless skeleton washed up on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Meet Patricia, a victim complete with serial numbered breast implants handy for posthumous identification. We learn Patricia is the pastor of Inclusion Church, an all-are-welcome worship group that meets on the isolated island Patricia calls home. Locals report she had gone out for a swim and never returned.

Funnily enough, records for Patricia only go back five years; FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) tells Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) he thinks the lady’s got a suspiciously unshady past.

But things really get interesting after the discovery of a set of skeletal gams thought to be Patricia‘s other half. The pelvis says male, but the vagina says, well, you get it. Records on Patricia only go back five years because six years ago she was a he. A male mega-church pastor, preaching against evils of the world and siphoning money from the wallets of devotees. His name was Patrick Stevenson, and he had a wife and son. Safe to say, the skeleton’s split-in-two state is a handy metaphor for the pastor herself.

Booth and Brennan get the gender bending phone call while searching the victim’s home, and immediately head back to FBI headquarters. (What’s the rush? The deceased is already a decomposed skeleton. I think the need for speed has lapsed.)

They begin to dissect a telling phone message left on Patricia’s machine from JP, one of her parishioners, a married man fresh out of jail. It’s beginning to look like the two had an affair, and it’s here that buttoned-down Booth starts to get uncomfortable.

“Look, there’s no way the guy on that answering machine knew that he-she-he knew that she-he was transgendered,” he says.

Holy personal pronouns, Batman!

When questioned, JP insists he did know of Patricia’s past, and it didn’t bother him. Cross Suspect One off the list.

Meanwhile, Cam (Tamara Taylor) is busy in the lab trying to identify the cause of death with the help of this week’s alternaZack (see definition: al-ter-na-Zack, noun - single-episode lab rat filling in for much beloved season one through three regular who is now behind bars for a murder he only kind of committed; it‘s complicated.) Vincent (Ryan Cartwright) is a British grad-student with a retentive mind, meaning the guy has an affinity for TMI moments. His knowledge repertoire includes such nuggets as:

- Women blink twice as often as men.
- Tongue prints are as distinct as fingerprints.
- Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, but only in tropical fish stores.

Next!

As the search continues, Booth and Brennan track down Patricia’s unhappy ex-wife, and eventually her son, a young man who bucked the commercial religion life for one of down-and-dirty, honest servitude. Both were told Patrick had died; they believed him a man so devout he was a part of some Running Start Rapture. When he’s told of his father’s transformation, however, the son’s features take on a look of relief. He understands, he says, and only wishes he could have known his father after he became Patricia.

Cam nails down the murder weapon: a boat. After a survey of particulates and other cool, science-y stuff, the team heads to the docks where they locate JP’s vessel and determine it to be the one that twice ran over Patricia. JP denies involvement; his guilty looking wife standing in the background doesn’t. Gotcha.

In other developments, Angela and Hodgins are back to their awkward, post-breakup unfriendliness, despite last episode deciding they were no longer going to avoid one another. (The two did complete the night’s funniest two-parter. Vincent puts the moves on Angela, and Hodgins sets him straight: “That’s too much car for you,” he says. The clueless newcomer gives it another go, and Angela delivers a saucy, steeled rejection: “Vroom, vroom kid. You’re already in my rearview mirror.”)
But the best line of the night came from Booth - who throughout the episode referred to Patricia as “not a real woman” - while sitting in a service at Inclusion Church, where Patricia’s son begins preaching in his father’s footsteps.

“Redemption through transformation. I get it,” Booth says, and it seems he truly does. Turning to Brennan, he asks “What do you believe in Bones?”

“I believe in always swimming with a buddy.”

Yes. We. Can.

The blog on Bones: The Crank in the Shaft (S4, Ep5)

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It’s workplace romance and Cubicle Farm country taken on in this week’s Bones, as Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and Dr. Temperence Brennan (Emily Deschanel) search out the killer of a beloved office manager from amongst her coworkers. The episode plays out like a game of Clue: Was it the slacker with the joint in the machine room? The ex-employee with the grudge on the 16th floor? The boss with the shady alibi in the copy room?
And as far as victim discoveries go, Bones often trolls down Icky Lane, but this one takes a turn straight onto the Oh-that’s-nasty Super Highway. The woman’s body (or what’s left of it) is found in, on and throughout an elevator shaft. It’s a multi-floor mess: after she was killed, she was dumped into the hoistway and gradually ground by the lift’s up-and-down trips until finally it threw the mechanism off kilter. On the Grossness Richter Scale, this one registers loud and clear (see: Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor) actually calling for a spatula. Blech.).
Speaking of dark and twisty images, meet this week’s Zack replacement (one in a string of single-episode characters filling in for the season one through three regular who now occupies a cell in a mental institution). His name is Fisher (Joel Moore), and he’s a None-of-us-are-getting-out-of-life-alive type fellow. Real cheery, that one.
He does, however, provide ample opportunity for Cam to deliver some good one-liners. If the show isn’t going to give her a storyline outside the lab, at least they’re filling her comedic quota. She deadpans with the best of them. (Cam had the best line of the night: “I don’t know how this happened, I run a safe building,” the property manager says. “Right,” she responds, tossing out the words as if flicking off a cigarette, “except for the mangled dead woman.”)
As it turns out, the victim wasn’t as beloved as some seemed to believe. In fact, she was a world-class tattletale. When she caught two coworkers in an R-rated rendezvous and threatened to turn them in, one lobbed a stapler at her head, which struck and in turn ruptured a dormant aneurysm, effectively rendering her murdered.
Like last week’s episode, this one continues to shine of Bones’ former, pre-writer’s strike glory. Buckle up, I do believe this show has shifted back into full gear.
And with that, Brennan’s socially inept worldview continues to charm: throughout episode five she comments on the drone-like state of mid-level workers in corporate America. Nearly as funny as her observations are Booth’s reactions to them. But the couple that really stole the show was, as they were once known, Hodgela. Dr. Jack Hodgins (TJ Thyne) and Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) finally hold their post-breakup talk. As she tries to explain to Sweets (John Frances Daley) and he tries to explain to Cam, things between them have gone from intense to just plain tense, which doesn’t bode well in the workplace. But what starts as two former lovers facing off in a battle of stuttering takes a surprisingly pleasant turn.
“I’m not going to hide anymore and I’m not going to walk on eggshells,” Angela says to a happily relieved Hodgins. “I’m just going to accept that this whole damn mess happened, and pain or not, I’m glad it did.”
So are we, Angela, so are we.

Do the reinlender

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POULSBO — “Down up, down up, down up, down up,” instructor Fred Aalto says, leading into a heel-toe jaunt.
Aaand we’re off.
This is the the newest addition to the Poulsbo Sons of Norway class lineup, a novice folk dancing class aimed at the inexperienced. It’s an autumnal Monday evening, and eagerness is in the air.
Aalto has turned our dance floor into an imaginary solar system: in the center sits the sun — don’t want to get too close — and so round and round it we orbit, first stepping to a rhythm, then switching to a shuffle with the same rounded motion.
There are seven of us to start with, though stragglers nearly double that number by class’ end.
It’s like walking on a mattress, or a spongy forest floor, Aalto described. Soon, we incorporate turns, visualizing ourselves as light bulbs being turned into socket.
(Needless to note, these metaphors are each sold separately. Picturing yourself as a light bulb doing circles on a mossy mattress probably won’t work well out of context.)
But like building blocks, the images Aalto demonstrates begin to flow together, and before we realize it, we’re doing the reinlender, a folkish jig of Scandinavian descent.
Aalto and his wife and teaching partner Linda hover gracefully over the dance floor, the bounce in their step belying age, as if the two danced here straight from Brigadoon. Aalto began dancing when in college in the Boston area; he’s now in his 60s. They instruct the lodge’s continuing dance class at 7 p.m. each Monday night, and recently added one for beginners which meets beforehand from 6-7 p.m. They lay waste to the “those who can’t do, teach” phrase.
“With this sort of thing, some people will take a very long time and some people will pick things up quickly,” Aalto said. “This gives the beginners a fighting chance to pick up things they’ve never done before.”
Never having done a polka myself, I called Aalto earlier in the day to pose a few questions about the class:
Cost? I asked him. Two dollars. That’s less damage than a latte, and it covers the entire night, so for those who want to stick around for the continuing dancers’ class, they may.
Dress code? Standard issue comfort, he said. Clothing easy to move in paired with clean, preferably smooth-soled shoes fit the bill. High heels or tennis shoes heavy in traction can make things more difficult. One of my dance partners said his soft-soled, leather loafers suited the occasion well.
Speaking of partners, I asked Aalto if coming solo really is OK, as the class advertises. Normally, you’d think showing up for dance lessons sans partner is a like having Huey Lewis without the News. But in this case, it pans out perfectly. Nearly half a dozen others came alone or with friends of the same sex. Every few minutes or so Fred calls for a partner switch, so that each student learns to dance without depending on another. It also allowed us to experience dancing with all different skill levels and body types.
“It gives you a sense of what you have to do to dance with anybody,” he said. “It really is a question of learning how to move and doing a number of really basic dances. It’s very, very simple and very, very basic.”
My first partner was a 77-year-old gentleman named Dick Berg from Bainbridge Island. Newcomers the both of us, we managed to find the correct foot placement before swapping for a new accomplice.
Next up, it was around the dance floor with 66-year-old Kingstonite Gary Henry, who joked he was “influenced severely” by his wife Linda to attend. But Henry made a good sport of it. The class was his third; he first attended the regular lessons, but hadn’t been able to quite catch on.
“It was too advanced for me,” he said. “I am the dancing equivalent of a sub-prime mortgage.”
Though he said folk dancing isn’t quite his usual style, he’s considering sticking with it.
“The jury’s still out,” he said.
But the verdict seemed to be in for my third partner, Silverdale’s Mark Reece, who came with his wife Peggy while their teenaged daughter danced with the youth upstairs.
“It was pretty cool!” Reece said post-jive, adding they plan to attend again. Still far from perfect, he and I had nearly mastered the turn — it may as well have been the Tour de France we were spinning so rightly. Rightly enough, wouldn’t you know, to earn accolades from Aalto.
“Very good, very good,” he had said. Forget the sun at the center of our solar system; see me beam with the simple accomplishment.
But the idea the Reeces seemed to have in mind is just what Aalto is hoping for.
“We believe strongly that dancing should be a family activity,” he said. “So often we see the situation where parents encourage their children to dance and they don’t dance themselves.”
That’s been the case for Kim Barker, a 48-year-old father of three who decided enough was enough. All of his kids and his wife dance.
“I’ve held out a long time,” he said. This was his second beginner’s lesson. “I don’t dance, so it was a challenging concept.”
But by the end of class, it seemed all had caught on, despite a little dizziness and what at times could be likened to “bumper-dancing.”
“This adult class is a confidence building class, that’s really what it comes down to,” Aalto said. He added it works well for the elderly, as teaching goes at a slow speed and movements aren’t jarring.
“The idea is this is going to be quite different from our normal Monday nights.”
And like any good mission to the cosmos, Henry and I noted this one deposits its students home in plenty of time to watch another spacey spectacle: Dancing with the Stars.

The blog on Bones: The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond (S4, Ep4)

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Oh, the unequivocal joy felt when a favorite television character returns to your small screen. It’s as if they never left.
That’s right, Zack (Eric Millegan) is back on Bones, for an episode at least. Until now the former cast regular has been referred to this season like a kind of Harry Potter-esque nemesis: the Squint Squad member who shall not be named. Now we discover most of the others have been paying him visits in his high-security mental institution, to which he was banished after confessing to helping a serial killing cannibal terminate members of a secret society. Both Hogdins and Angela (TJ Thyne and Michaela Conlin) having been paying him visits - separately, of course, since their rather awkward split (see: Zack and Hodgins claiming “King of the Looney Bin” instead of the usual “King of the Lab”) - and Sweets (John Francis Daley) has been acting as his therapist. It’s by stealthily swapping the magnetic strip on his own library card with that of Sweets’ access card that he’s able to escape the institution, running straight to the lab to help with the case that has everyone stumped.
And needless to say, he solves the mystery faster than a chubby kid going downhill on roller skates.
What proves hard to solve is a set of bones discovered in twelve separate pieces, sans the skull, found floating in an industrial, algae-filled pond. Once discovered, it’s to the lab the remains go, where they are scrutinized by new intern Wendell Bray (Michael Terry), a good-looking scholarship kid who’s depending on the job so he can pay back people in his wrong-side-of-the-tracks neighborhood, after they pooled their cash together to send him to school in the first place.
When partners FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and Dr. Temperence Brennan (Emily Deschanel) discover the bones belong to an obsessive compulsive sci-fi author who was dating an older woman, Brennan asks Wendell what he thinks about May-December relationships. He assumes she’s flirting and worries about losing his job, but Angela quickly sets him straight on the social clumsiness she tends to infuse into conversations. At the end of the episode, we’re left to wonder whether he’ll stay or go. (Let’s hope he stays: he’s cute, Brennan likes him and he’s (gasp!) nearly as smart as Zack, plus he told a great story about his father. I’m won over.)
Meanwhile, Booth and Brennan continue the hunt for the killer, bouncing from his psychologist to his barista, his publisher to his girlfriend’s son. But none of them prove to be the culprit.
Lucky for the team, Zack appears just as straits are becoming dire. He notices the victim’s mother, too, suffers from OCD. It turns out she had a murderous breakdown when her son was becoming free of his disorder but she wasn’t of hers.
But the biggest reveal comes again in the form of Zack: as Sweets is walking him back to the institution, he confesses once again. He didn’t commit the murder he’s convicted of - not literally. He simply told the real killer where the guy could be found. Sweets urges him to make it known, but Zack feels just as guilty for accessorizing murder as if he’d done it himself. This may be a little backpedaling by writers, especially after Zack’s leaving the show went over so poorly with fans. Either way, it’s good to know, and leaves a flickering hope he could, someday, be back in the lab.
And, in this latest installment of the will-they-won’t-they Booth and Brennan storyline, the bickering banter is especially thick and charming. Combined with the gimmick-free case that included lots of cool science-y stuff and Zack‘s triumphant but brief return, it made this episode reminiscent of the best of seasons past.

Burn After Reading is a fiery flop

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It’s a pseudo-Darwinian world in Burn After Reading, one in which only the most tenacious — not the most well-intentioned or able-bodied, and certainly not the most intelligent — survive what shakes out to be a vicious circle of happenstance.

From the minds of brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (of Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men fame) comes this Seinfeldian farce about what happens when moronic, self-obsessed citizens get mixed up in quasi-official CIA business.

Really, it’s an arbitrary tale that spirals from the funny to the inane about a bunch of riffraff who, er, ingested too many paint chips, if you catch my drift.

The black comedy begins with the firing of alcoholic CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), who plans his retaliation in the form of a tell-all memoir about his sordid career experiences (see: Malkovich’s constant pronunciation of the word memoir as “mem-wah,” which is proof enough how highly this character deems himself despite no one else taking him seriously.)

Cox’s icy wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), meanwhile, is carrying on an affair with Harry (George Clooney), a sex-obsessed federal employee who continually cheats on his own spouse with women he meets online.

But things get interesting when a disc containing Osborne’s “mem-wah” is accidentally left in a Hardbodies Fitness Center, where employees Linda and Chad (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) think they’ve discovered Top-Secret ‘stuff’ — referred to constantly and hilariously throughout the film by Chad as another “s” word. The two decide to engage in an info-napping scheme with clownish, sophomoric glee, she pursuing a constant quest to fund cosmetic surgeries her insurance won’t pay for and he, a clueless, twitchy sidekick infatuated with the chance at espionage. McDormand’s and Pitt’s dimwitted banter is the highlight of the film; the pair’s initial call to Osborne in demand of ransom is, in itself, nearly worth the ticket price.

But unfortunately for paying viewers Burn soon deteriorates to a string of sketch comedy-like scenes featuring the out-of-hand actions of blithering idiots. The plot becomes wearing, making its 96 minutes feel longer than they should, and anyone thrown by the off-screen exit of a major No Country character can be sure to be dismantled once again, as most of the leads conclude their journeys only through a summary narrative played out by two bewildered CIA superiors (David Rasche and J.K. Simmons).

“Report back to me when it, I don’t know, makes sense,” says one flustered official to the other.

Perhaps the Coen brothers could do the same.

The blog on Bones: The Finger in the Nest (S4, Ep3)

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Of all the things to find in a bird’s nest, it had to be a finger. A phalange, actually. A singular, partly flesh-covered phalange, which is usually an indication nineteen other phalanges will be found nearby, attached to a very singular corpse.
That’s the commencement of this week’s Bones, which finds Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and his dauntless 6-year-old son Parker (Ty Panitz) discovering on a sunny day in the park one of nature’s most special treasures: a dead guy’s finger in a tree.
When the rest of the remains are found the body is identified as Dr. Seth Elliot, a veterinarian with a gambling problem. Close inspection by the Squint Squad reveals the murder weapon to be of the furry, four-legged variety, meaning Booth and his forensic anthropologist partner Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) must set out in search of the owner of the Fido at fault.
It’s quite the circumstance: If a dog is a man’s best friend, what does he make of that man’s enemy? Kibbles ‘n bits, in this case.
But after determining innocent an ex-con who may have held a grudge against Dr. Elliot, Booth and Brennan head to the home of Robbie, a teenager who worked part-time at the vet clinic and is studying to go to medical school with the encouragement of his down-and-out father. It’s on their property police discover a fighting ring, a pack of chained dogs and lots of canine remains. All Michael Vick jokes aside, it turns out to be Robbie’s tutor, a medical student, who ordered his dog to make a chew toy of Dr. Elliot after the veterinarian happened upon the dog fights and snapped a few photos as proof.
Clues this week came courtesy of Scott, a new-to-the-lab intern and middle-aged jack-of-all-trades who sold Dr. Jack Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) a bum 1950s hotrod when Hodgins was still a gullible, silver spoon-fed kid. Fresh off an awkward run-in with ex-fiance Angela (Michaela Conlin), Hodgins sourly cracks wise about Scott’s unwanted presence while swatting away a hovering Dr. Lance Sweets (John Frances Daley), who later manages to assure him his bad mood is purely a coping mechanism.
Don’t worry, Bones isn’t going the way of Edward Herrmann’s extended stay on Grey’s Anatomy; Scott is headed out to a dig assignment by the episode’s end, leaving a vacant spot on the Jeffersonian roster once again. But with a revolving door of lab techs, Bones continues to lack the center on which it has balanced for the past three seasons. Its infamous, quick-jabbing lab discussions have waned as the core characters spend more time apart than they do as a collective.
The Dog Whisperer’s Cesar Milan also makes an appearance, acting as himself to help solve the case. And lucky for Booth, Parker is more bothered by bully troubles at school than the grisly day-at-the-park souvenir.
Still left to our imaginations are the whereabouts of last season’s Zack, though rumor has it next week he’ll be called onto a case, and perhaps make an appearance at the Jeffersonian. No word either on last week’s Daisy Wick, the short-lasting intern who captured Sweets’ attention (Anyone who enjoyed Carla Gallo’s guest spot should check out her The 40-Year-Old Virgin stint; it’s a riot).
But this episode does, as most usually do, throw a bone to those hoping Booth and Brennan become more than just friends. After the case is solved, Brennan decides to give the at-fault dog a new home, one where he won’t be forced to attack. Booth has to break the news that the dog was put down, as is policy, and the two give him a proper burial.
“Like all dogs, Ripley only saw the good in people. Dogs are like that. People should take a lesson,” says a teary Brennan, leaning down to place the dog’s tags on the ground.
It’s as much as any good dog could hope for, Booth says, but not before swiftly wiping away a tear of his own.

The blog on Bones: The Man in the Outhouse (S4, Ep2)

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The Hollywood writers strike may have ended after 14 weeks back in February, but there’s no getting around it: ramifications are still rippling through our favorite returning TV shows like pesky little waves on a normally glassy pond. Case in point is this week’s Bones, which seemed like a topsy-turvy turn from the premiere that aired the Wednesday prior.

But unlike its campy season opener set in London, the follow up episode did get back to the basics of the show; there was plenty of witty banter, a fair amount of It’s-Greek-to-me science and loads of that infamous sexual tension, thicker than air à la Moonlighting.

The forces of said tension, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and his forensic anthropologist partner Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel), are called into the field after a thickheaded trucker visits a roadside outhouse to take a simultaneous cigarette and bathroom break, lighting a methane-fueled explosion.

What’s left behind is a seriously Out-of-Service restroom and the discovered remains of what used to be Bill O’Rourke, host of a reality television show that specializes in catching married men mid-affair.

After sifting through suspects (see: a conga line of angry, ousted ex-husbands, a big-wig producer and the tramp stamped assistant with whom Bill was carrying on his own extramarital affair), Brennan and Booth nail the bad guy, a member of the show’s production crew who went a little crazy after discovering Bill’s mistress was a woman he used to date and still, apparently, loves.

The Jeffersonian clue crew sends along their usual assistance, this time with the help of Daisy Wick, an intern replacement supposedly meant to fill the shoes of Zack (beloved, card-carrying Squint Squad member seasons one through three), who as far as we know remains in a mental institution after assisting a serial killing cannibal.

Zack’s whereabouts are just part of a plot that seems more than a little loose-ended; most noticeably missing from the episode was any mention of the split between lab lovebirds Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) and Dr. Jack Hodgins (T.J. Thyne). The longtime couple called it quits with little warning during the premiere, but no reference has since been made to the sinking of their rather passionate interlude.

The episode did contain one meet cute, when Dr. Lance Sweets (John Francis Daley) gives Daisy a call after she’s fired from the lab (Who can blame them? Nobody likes a suck-up… except maybe Sweets.)

But the real interest is between Brennan and the two (count ‘em, two) men she’s revealed to be seeing. One is a well-built deep sea welder who keeps her occupied in the bedroom, the other is a cheek-kissing, Cold Play-listening botanist she enjoys for intellectual conversation. Booth preaches monogamy to Brennan, who sees the morally restrictive confines of dating to be Jurassic in nature, but when things go south after the welder and botanist find out about one another, Booth takes her side, telling her even she can find someone she’s meant to spend the rest of her life with. Boreanaz delivers the line with the soapiest of lovelorn looks, and the writers could be chided for pulling the sentimental chord on this one, but viewers are left - strings successfully plucked - gooey-eyed over the potential Bones romance.

The scene also goes to prove Sweets’ worth: though at the start of the episode he seems out of place, offering up his opinion on human remains despite Brennan’s strict aversion to non-scientific bias, the episode’s end shows his therapy sessions aren’t just for comic relief. Out of his office the show has created the perfect spotlight to illuminate the Booth and Brennan relationship.

And oh, how they catch the light.

The blog on Bones: Yanks in the U.K. (S4, Ep1)

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It's always a sketchy bet when your favorite television show jumps locations. Think Weeds post the Agrestic neighborhood fire. Or how about how much less homey it felt when those Dawson's kids traded in their angst-filled bedrooms for the booze-soaked halls of a dorm? History shows, swapping locales on the small screen isn't often the hottest idea, even on a temporary scale.

It barely worked for Carrie Bradshaw in Paris, and same goes for FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and his forensic anthropologist partner Dr. Temperence Brennan (Emily Deschanel) in the England-set season opener of Bones.

The two hopped across the pond for the start of Season Four Wednesday night, and the result was a bit off-kilter, with less intellectual crime solving and more tea vs. coffee stereotypes than the Queen herself could count.

But fortunately for Bones, the misstep is easily forgiven. After months of abscence following a strike-shortened season that ended with a favorite member of the Squint Squad on the chopping block, Bones' two-hour return was welcomed to the small screen with open arms, as trite and rhythmically jumbled as it may have been.

Booth and Brennan head to England to give speeches to their British counterparts - he at Scotland Yard and she at Oxford University. During downtime, the two engage in their usual bickering, which in this episode consists mostly of Brennan chiding Booth on his egocentrism (see: Booth maneuvering a Mini Cooper against the flow of traffic in a roundabout, hollering his maverick thanks for the American Revolution.) But both are pulled into a murder investigation after an American heiress' body is lifted from the Thames.

The two are paired with Detective Cate Pritchard and her scientific cohort Ian Wexler who, incidentally, keeps hitting on Brennan with little more style and charm than American Pie's Stifler. But she turns him down so as not to upset Booth, providing an 'Aww'-worthy moment for fans of the will-they-won't-they storyline.

When Wexler is found dead from an apartment fire, Booth and Brennan are once again called in to help... because apparently detectives are in short supply in the Mother Country.

But the real shocker happens back in the states, back in that stainless steel lab for which us viewers have been so despondent, where lovebirds Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) and Dr. Jack Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) get what they've long searched for: Angela's accidental husband makes his long awaited appearance and ultimately signs divorce papers. Cheers to the writers for not going the way of Sweet Home Alabama on this one, though at the end of the episode Hodgela fans are left pouting in disappointment when the two apruptly end their engagement. It's a tricky test: if Angela and Hodgins ricochet and last season's Zack remains MIA, the Jeffersonian team could be in dire risk of shattering House-style. Poor Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor) is even adding to the fire, after her tryst with Angela's hunky ex doesn't go over with her coworkers as well as she'd hoped.

But breaking up the soapy dramatics, Bones finally leans on the funny physical antics of relatively new cast member John Francis Daley, who plays the wry and goofily invasive Dr. Lance Sweets. Lending a new texture to the show, he offers a few enlightening shrink sessions to the lab techs. He also takes a tumble or two that leave viewers hoping the writers can come up with believable reasons for the character to keep lurking over everyone's shoulders.

There is one question yet to be answered, one plot facet barely addressed in the season kickoff: Where, oh where, has our favorite robotic and socially inept Zack gone? Last season left many with (you guessed it) a bone to pick with the show's writers after Eric Millegan's beloved character was revealed to be evil Gormogon's apprentice. Though it was made clear Zack only had a hand in one murder, aligning himself wth a serial killing cannibal should leave a serious black mark on his record. Our hopes for him staying in the crime-solving game are in peril, but show creator Hart Hanson has promised the prodigious genius will be back.

Stiller doesn't quite call down the 'Thunder'

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Ah, the things an actor will do for a Teen Choice Award.

Like, for example, trek through bug-infested jungles with nary an iPhone for comfort, facing unfathomable perils in the vein of, say, cuddly panda bears.

That’s the premise of “Tropic Thunder,” a Hollywoodland mockery of the entertainment industry that leans on big names and bigger explosions to compensate for comedy that is mostly mediocre.

It’s another R-rated summer attempt at laughs that came oh-so-close, yet is still so far from a hit.

“Thunder” follows the cast and crew of a film about American heroes on a near-suicide rescue mission during the Vietnam War. Heading the cast are fading action flick juggernaut Tugg Speedman (co-writer/director Ben Stiller) and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an Australian method actor who underwent a controversial skin-darkening procedure for the role.

They’re spoiled and failing: five days into shooting the project is already a month behind schedule, thanks in part to the prima donna rivalry Kirk and Tugg have developed. These are guys who do, after all, equate having TiVo with clean water and a roof overhead.

Sent off the grid, deep into the jungle where personal assistants holding Evians and Blackberries are nowhere to be found, Tugg and Kirk begin what they think is a gorilla-style shooting of the film, replete with realistic ambushes to heighten their performances as well as those of fellow cast mates Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), Alpa Chino (a very funny Brandon T. Jackson whose presence holds its own even against Downey Jr.’s) and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel).

But what starts as a movie capturing its actors drooling while crying and pulling Christ-like poses as they’re hole-punched with bullets just to earn that Oscar nod soon becomes a movie-within-a-movie when they find themselves unwitting targets of real-life, gun-weilding drug lords.

From its start “Tropic Thunder” is full of blood, sweat and grime; Jack Black even completes a scene sporting grossly leftover vomit on his face.

It’s also full of cameos — some longer and more hilarious than others — including Tobey Maguire, Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey.

But what at times is laugh-out-loud hysterical seems at others to be one large “I guess you had to be there” joke.

The screen is a bit overcrowded, with Cruise’s overweight, cursing studio exec pitted against the over-the-top deliveries by Stiller and Black.

But the comedy, almost in shock jock form, still pulls through on occasion, creating an intermittent gut-buster with shortcomings mitigated by a host of recognizable faces making fun of their own. While most films depend on an actor’s ability to blend into a role, spotting the celebrity becomes — for better or worse — half of “Tropic Thunder’s” fun.

And while Cruise’s booty-shaking dance over the ending credits is so ridiculous you can’t look away, the compensation doesn’t go far enough. The posturing and drollery is

quickly forgotten, as is — whether or not it should be — the soured view of an industry that, like the film depicts, spends millions on a single shot in the name of escapism.

“Tropic Thunder” pulls a few funny punches, but for the most part is a wash out.

So, what, exactly... happened?

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“Mother of God,” said the assertive bystander. “What kind of terrorists are these?”

That’s the question asked in M. Night Shyamalan’s newest film “The Happening,” about which the best part is its length: one hour, 31 minutes.

It’s awful, but at least it’s over quickly.

The movie, like any good scary story, starts out at 8:33 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. It’s shot almost completely in daylight, much of it outside amidst lush green fields. No creepy darkness, no damp warehouses — Shyamalan employs none of the usual tricks of the terror trade.

But unfortunately for the filmmaker so well known for his infamous twist in the “I see dead people” favorite “The Sixth Sense,” his latest venture is likely to be remembered only as a flop. When it comes to the Richter Scale of Scariness, this one barely even registers.

“The Happening” follows Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Alma (Zooey Deschanel), a young couple on the brink of breakup. He’s a high school science teacher trying to teach today’s youth to think outside the box, and she’s having tiramisu dates with another guy. Though the audience is supposed to be rooting for them to work things out, Wahlberg and Deschanel are so completely devoid of chemistry that if the repopulation of Earth lies with them, humanity may as well be written off with the dinosaurs.

The two are fleeing Philadelphia by train with Elliot’s buddy Julian (John Leguizamo) and his young daughter Jess after word of a terrorist attack hitting the East Coast — one that makes its victims stop whatever they’re doing, stand like a stick of celery for a few seconds and then exert enough mental capacity to decapacitate themselves. In short order, they become willingly suicidal.

While early depictions of this attack are striking — one scene shows construction men walking off a building’s edge in a very haunting, non- “It’s raining men” kind of way — what starts out going down Spooky Lane ends up taking a turn on the Insipid Plotline Highway.

Instead of the usual twists and shocks, the movie plays like a hyperbolized environmentalist’s warning as we discover early on that trees and shrubs are plotting through the wind against the invading human species. Yes, you read that correctly. The plants emit a poisonous chemical that causes people to do themselves in in various disturbing ways, like shoving their heads through plate-glass windows or running themselves over with an industrial-sized lawnmower. Gone is the expected and hoped-for Shyamalan-stamped mind puzzle.

It’s campy and shallow, and at times has a realism akin to a junior high play. After their ride out of town goes kaput, Elliot and Alma go running for the hills with the rural Pennsylvania locals. While fleeing, they just so happen to stop for a side character’s speech on the misunderstood nature of hot dogs. Not that I’ve ever been in the situation, but I’m guessing if I’m outrunning an invisible, fatal airborne toxin, I’m not going to stop to listen about the manifest destiny of link-shaped pork.

At another point, while witnessing the deaths of a group of poison victims, Alma faces Elliot and yells “we can’t just stand here as uninvolved observers!” Not only is that probably the most complex sentence spoken in the movie, it’s delivered with a wide-eyed exasperation that simply can’t be taken seriously.

Ladies and gentlemen: There’s even a moment in which Elliot tries to save himself by singing a Doobie Brothers song.

Sure, there are a few successes in the film. One includes a speech from Wahlberg regarding a “completely superfluous bottle of cough syrup,” and another — possibly a shout out to a jump-from-your-skin “Sixth Sense” moment — has the camera coming upon a landscaper’s truck, then a series of ladders and finally a dozen men’s bodies hanging in the trees.

But the real ringer is the setting. How enticing can a film be when its antagonists are America’s fruited plains? While it could be said Shyamalan uses nature as-is to make his audience think, (i.e. Is Mother Nature about to lash out at our polluting population? Has she already begun?) it still stands that it simply doesn’t work.

The film also stars an ill-used and nearly unrecognizable (they grow up so fast!) Spencer Breslin, and strides along at the pace of a host of horrible instrumentals. When it comes to this summer’s blockbuster disappointment list, this one just nabbed the top spot, knocking even “Jumper” out of the race. Despite its intentions, “The Happening” just doesn’t have it going on.

"Sex and the City": Here's to the fans

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Story stays close to home, drama goes Big.

Nothing pulls the sequined sling-backs out of the closet like an elite Manhattan event, and Friday night there was one of those happening at just about every movie theater in every town in the country. The opening of “Sex and the City: The Movie” may not have curb appeal to the Average Joe, but there were plenty of Average Janes, some dressed in above average fashion, amassed at local cinemas for the much anticipated reunion of Carrie Bradshaw and Co.

That’s right, the girls are back in town. In fact, they never actually left it.

“Sex and the City: The Movie” takes place four years after the HBO series’ credits last rolled in 2004. Like the rest of us, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) have moved on since we last checked in, with relationships, kids, careers and great outfits hanging in the balance.

In the spirit of the night, I attended the movie with my own trio of pals, each of us wearing some fabulous footwear of our own. Chatter from the mostly female audience filled the air like the snapping of blue studded Manolo’s on a New York City sidewalk. And as I sat waiting for the previews to begin, it was in true Carrie Bradshaw fashion that I couldn’t help but wonder ... was this even going to be any good? Would our great sexpectations be rewarded, or were we about to get a TV-turned-movie flop about as tranquilizing as “Bewitched?” Sure, show producer Michael Patrick King is back and in the writer’s and director’s chair. But where should we draw the line? When it comes to a good thing, how much is too much?

While I was at it, I had to question the obvious: Would Big and Carrie make it for the long haul? Would Charlotte finally become pregnant like she’d always dreamed, and had Miranda survived these last four years of motherhood and marriage living in — gasp! dare I type it? — Brooklyn? Finally, would the whole of Manhattan’s male populace ever be the same with Samantha off-the-market, living monogamous in Los Angeles — and like a shark that can’t stop swimming, could she actually survive that way?



Answers to these queries and more are given throughout the movie, which plays like an extended episode of the show. While it’s nothing that will land in the movie halls of fame, it’s certainly just what series fans were hoping for. The plot smacks of familiarity, as a wedding, an affair, a breakup and a pregnancy unfold. And knowing Samantha, there may or may not be some jaw-dropping bedroom acrobatics.

Going bicoastal and bringing back many of the show’s original side characters, the movie poses a few questions of its own: Can there be happily ever after 40? When it comes to love, is forgiving and forgetting enough? And for that matter, is loving yourself truly most important?

Chris Noth, Evan Handler, David Eigenberg and Jason Lewis all resurrect their significant other roles, and new to the mix is Carrie’s assistant, played in a sweetly show-stealing performance by Jennifer Hudson. The movie dabbles in its usual comical spriteness, but takes a few surprisingly dramatic turns. It certainly doesn’t shy from exposing the downs — not just the ups — of its heroine’s fantastical lives. And another new character is found in a certain closet, which plays an integral role in the Big and Carrie saga that might just fulfill the secret fantasy of every clotheshorse on earth.

Clearly made with fans in mind, “Sex and the City: The Movie” isn’t one for those unfamiliar with the series. Then again, it may just inspire them to pick up the DVDs and give the first round a go.

But the one thing Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha taught throughout their six devoted years on the small screen rang true once more. Whether in finding love, losing it or just clinking cosmos on a Saturday night, there’s at least one thing you can never have too much of. One thing, sappy as it sounds, that will never go out of style. Stripped of its glitter, in its own way the movie raises a toast to friendship. Because like stepping out in a favorite pair of shoes, that’s the one thing you can count on time and time again.

Speed-racing Iron Man made of honor in Vegas

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Life’s a gas with “Speed Racer”



The Wachowski brothers (“The Matrix” trilogy) are back in theaters family friendly-style with “Speed Racer” — a kaleidoscope of live-action animation excitement starring a slew of Hollywood favorites. Emile Hirsch (“Into the Wild”) is Speed Racer, an up-and-coming racing star who must fight for what the sport is really about in the face of corporate greed. Susan Sarandon and John Goodman as Mom and Pops Racer and Christina Ricci the wide-eyed girlfriend Trixie headline a supporting cast of big names in the tale about what’s truly important in life. With fantastical racetracks (reminiscent of Sega Sonic the Hedgehog video games), ninjas, headhunters and more, the movie is shockingly colorful, like a pack of Skittles melted all over the screen. But what some might see as actors talking to tennis balls in front of green screens turns out to be a sweet story and an entertaining ride for those willing to suspend reality.
Matthew Fox rounds out the cast as the masked Racer X, who delivers each mysterious line with the same slick purr as a well-oiled T-180. Questions arise and adventures ensue as Speed and Co. try to redeem the dignity of racing and restore their family name while driving some seriously awesome cars in a racing world without rules. Take the whole family — and perhaps a pair of sunglasses — to this one while it’s on the big screen.

“Iron Man” is made of gold



If Robert Downey Jr. was looking for a way back into the mainstream hearts of America, he’s certainly found it. Viewers will be wanting more of him as Iron Man for years to come.
The first of this year’s booming blockbuster super heroes, “Iron Man” follows Maxim modelizer and arms-developing celebrity Tony Stark (Downey Jr.), whose capture in Afghanistan leaves him with no other choice than to build the ultimate weapons survival suit. Rocketing himself out of captivity, Stark takes on a dual identity as a sarcastic genius by day and a metallic crime-fighting powerhouse by night. Directed by Jon Favreau and also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges, “Iron Man” explodes in a feast of coolness comic fans will love. There’s a heart beneath all the futuristic hardware that keeps the enticing action tied to reality. Expect the crew to be back for more, and stay until after the credits on this one.

Sidekicks steal show in “Vegas”



Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher star as two opposites in a battle of the sexes in “What Happens in Vegas,” a factory-made string of hijinx which leans on its secondary characters to hit the heights of hilarity. Kutcher plays Jack, an easy-does-it furniture maker who is fired by his dad from the family business. Diaz plays Joy, a type-A New Yorker who’s good intentions string up a scheduling chokehold on her fiancé, causing him to dump her at his apartment while all their friends hide in the closet, waiting to surprise him for his birthday.
To blow off some steam, the two hit Las Vegas with their closest pals (Rob Corddry and Lake Bell). Thanks to fate (or a very convenient plot line), they meet, drink and get merry, earning themselves colossal hangovers and — whoops! — a marriage.
But before the two can say “annulment,” Jack plays a slot machine with Joy’s quarter and hits a $3 million jackpot. Sentenced to six months of hard marriage by a judge before the money can be touched, the two enter the ultimate showdown. He prides himself on not being marriage material, she’s so focused she practically breathes teal and taffeta. She’s high-maintenance, he’s a relationship sofa spud. Their ensuing trickery is comical but used — just watch Kutcher in “Just Married” if you don’t want to spend $9 at the theater — but Corddry and Bell’s few appearances rack up a handful of laugh-out-loud moments that just about make the rest worthwhile. The two trade jabs like “If I could make someone dead with my mind it would be you,” and are backed by a full supporting cast that delivers the funny fantastically. Written by Dana Fox (“The Wedding Date”) and also starring Treat Williams and Queen Latifah, Joy and Jack’s story putters along predictably, like any mainstream rom-com, but lucky for them, their sidekicks’ wisecracks cash in the laughs and roll out a win.

McDreamy falls flat with “Honor”



Patrick Dempsey trades in his scrubs and steamy elevator rides for a mini-kilt and deflated humor in “Made of Honor,” a story about Casanovaian skirt-chaser Tom (Dempsey), who leans on his best pal Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) for true human connection between sexual rompings. The two are a pair of TV-land New Yorkers, the kind who live in fabulous apartments, never have to work and can spend all day hanging around Big Apple landmarks telling inside jokes and eating off each other’s plates.
But it’s at the same time Tom realizes he’s in love with Hannah that Hannah announces she’s getting married. And not only does her new man complete her every dream and finish her every sentence, he’s a rich, hunky Scottish duke to boot. Hannah asks Tom to be her maid of honor, leaving Tom not only wondering where his manhood went, but how he’s going to win back the woman he loves.
Directed by Paul Weiland and written by Adam Sztykiel and Deborah Kaplan (“Can’t Hardly Wait”), the movie is nothing that hasn’t been seen before. Instead it’s a splicing together of bits and pieces of the past decade’s chic flicks that creates a new take on a story most viewers could probably have written and directed themselves, let alone watched with their eyes closed.
Tom employs his basketball buddies to take down the wedding from the inside out, while Hannah’s fiancé (Kevin McKidd) stands around looking brutishly good-looking using words like “fortnight” and “wee.”
Dempsey’s plays for laughs at times leaves the audience missing his cool “Grey’s” exterior (though the producers did manage to get him on a ferryboat, go figure), and the film’s ending can be spotted a mile away. But it does manage to include a few heartfelt moments, and fans of Dempsey’s or sappy cinema will find it a pleasant take on a story told many times over.

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" a thing to remember

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Chalk one more up in the Judd Apatow win column. The guy is a juggernaut of comical success.
"Forgetting Sarah Marshall," the newest in a slew of big screen hits straight out of Apatown, is a hilarious and heartfelt movie with all the goofy gleam genre fans have come to love.
Written by and starring Jason Segel ("Knocked Up," CBS' "How I Met Your Mother), "Sarah" follows down-and-out, hangdog Peter (Segel), a composer for the CSI-like TV drama "Crime Scene," of which girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell, "Veronica Mars") is star. But after Sarah dumps Peter — in an uproariously funny scene in which Peter is stark naked and in full, hapless view — the musician pendulums into a depressive craze, alternating between eating Fruit Loops in front the tube and inviting strange women into his bed.
After his attempts to heal his broken heart prove futile, the lumbering, weepy Peter goes on a Hawaiian getaway, only to find Sarah is staying at the same resort as he — with her new boyfriend in tow.
Sarah's flame is famous rocker Aldous Snow, (played by Brit comic Russell Brand, who's devil-may-care persona is priceless) who at one point responds to a request by a doting hotel waiter (Jonah Hill), regarding if he listened to his demo CD, by saying "I was going to... but then I just carried on living my life."



Stuffed with Apatow's sidesplitting regulars like Hill, Bill Hader and a wackily dazed Paul Rudd, as well as "30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer in an ever-hilarious quest to fulfill his wife's honeymoon enjoyment, the film is one with the perfect balance of the funny and the down-to-earth.
Lucky for Peter, his ruined vacation is brightened by delightful hotel clerk Rachel (Mila Kunis, "That 70s Show"), who's plucky and ungraceful yet sweet and insightful approach make the pair a perfect match. Turns out, Rachel is a little heartbroken as well, and she and Peter encourage one another to start fresh without missing a raunchy, jocose beat.
Segel, who starts the movie out with a pectoral dance in the mirror and then gives a grand, laugh-out-loud performance of his "Dracula" puppet rock opera in full Transylvanian accent, wrote an illegally funny and completely lovable script. Bell and Kunis should both be given props as well for giving their characters impeccable nuance and honesty.
Directed by Nicholas Stoller (writer for Apatow's "Undeclared") and produced by the comic juggernaut himself, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" makes a big splash in an already crowded pool, and will be a hard standard to meet for the rest of the summer's screwball gut busters.

"The Forbidden Kingdom" a teen paradise

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A magical tale that's a little more "bedtime story" than it is hardcore martial arts mania, "The Forbidden Kingdom" combines the legendary forces of Jet Li and Jackie Chan in a teen-friendly fight flick — after school special-style.
Written by John Fusco ("Hidalgo") and directed by Rob Minkoff ("Stuart Little"), the film follows Jason (Michael Angarano, "Sky High"), a martial arts-obsessed loner who's run-in with a gang of thieves sends him on a journey to right the wrong against burglarized pawn-shop owner Hop (Chan, in a turn reminiscent of Billy Crystal's Miracle Max). Transported through time and space, Jason finds himself in an unknown world, where great adventure and an intoxicated new friend lie before him.
Drunken Lu Yan (also Chan) takes Jason under his booze-soaked wing, and with a little help from the Silent Monk (Li) and the hauntingly beautiful Golden Sparrow, who refers to herself in the third person, they set off on their quest to free the imprisoned Monkey King (also Li).
Confused yet?
The movie tries to balance a host of subplots and mini dramas and winds up lagging in pace. But while some of the humor seems cheap — perhaps girded for all ages - at other times you can't help but laugh at the heart behind it. Angarano's acting is surprisingly on-mark, and he lends the film a natural feel.
As the evil Jade Warlord says to the Monkey King, "martial arts is based on deception." In this case, fight scenes with the aging Chan and Li are at times as realistic as "Space Jam," while at other times the action will keep lovers of the genre jockeying for a better seat.
Jason & Co. must travel to Five Elements Mountain, a Hogwarts-on-steroids fort where the Monkey King awaits freedom and the ability to rid the realm of the dreaded Jade warriors. Shenanigans plague their path as wondrous special effects display the fantastical world.
Chan and Li's match-up hits an endearingly comical note, and Jason turns out to be a bit like Dorothy in Oz. His adventure — and the mismatch of characters he meets throughout it — are perfect for kids, or just the kid inside you.

Mexican Train Dominos, toast and other lessons from Grandma

There are some milestones you never expect to meet. The kind you look forward to like a really good fairy-tale, but don't assume will actually hold water in real life. Enigmatic marks of achievement that, truth be told, might be better anticipated than actually reached. One such milestone I recently hit head on: chalking up a 23rd year in the column of life.
Twenty three. As Blair Waldorf would say, O-M-G.
That's no longer a teenager. It's barely hanging on to the early 20s like someone clinging to a cliff's edge by their cuticles.
Old. Ancient.
Twenty. Three.
But before I began online shopping for time machine must-haves (a heat-proof body suit and biosafe goggles) I had to stop and wonder, was this really the end? Could there be life after 22? Or was I just freaking out on overdrive?
Was I simply the product of an age-obsessed society, or was it really time to pick up some anti-wrinkle cream and pre-order the Boniva?
A few days before D-Day, I was visiting some family for the weekend. Normally a high-spirits bunch, the group mood was dampened after news of a relative's medical troubles. Even so, there was no complaining. Board games and beach walks ensued, and wrapping up that Saturday evening I found myself munching on salt water taffy and sipping decaf in the kitchen with my Grandma. My sweet, lovely Grandma. The woman who taught me how to make my bed and fold down the top cover so it looks just like it should in a fancy hotel. The woman who I fondly named toast with butter AND jelly after before I was even tall enough to reach the toaster. The woman who taught me how to play Mexican Train Dominos, and who was with me at my first, fabulous introduction to New York City. So it was surprise, nay shock, I felt when, while discussing said relative's health woes, the six words I never thought I'd hear her say floated from between her lips so precisely, they only lasted an instant.
Yet their aftershock landed like a bomb:
"Life can be pretty shitty sometimes."
Grandma?
I knew she was right, and even the wizened and mature have to put it to you straight sometimes. But I laughed off the sentiment. Aphorisms make much more sense coming from someone who's battled acne within the last decade, right?
Days later - my actual date of birth - I received a call from a friend. I was at work when my cell began to vibrate, but it was my day, afterall. The one celebrating the ever-closing gap between me and the AARP.
So I stepped away from the newsroom and answered.
"Jen, it's me."
Of course, I know this, thanks to caller ID. But still I feign surprise. Oh! How wonderful of you to call and wish me Happy Birthday!
"I wanted to let you know, I just left the doctor's office. They think I might have cancer."
My brain went quiet as Chernobyl.
Cancer? That's not funny. Not at all.
A few days later, she called with more news. It was cancer. Lymphoma. Stage four.
How could this be? This was my friend, my 24-year-old friend. The person who introduced me to Freaks and Geeks, Firefly and the Flying Dutchman. The friend who first taught me the importance of a well-deserved, post-deadline beer. The one nerdy enough to spend an entire night on a Die Hard marathon and discuss every nuance of a Stephenie Meyers novel. A girl cool enough to label herself a nerd.
How could this be?
Six words: "Life can be pretty shitty sometimes."
Yes Grandma. Yes it can.
And I'd like to say that's when it hit me, but in reality I think it took a few days to sink in. Immediate or not, that proverbial hammer finally clunked me over the head.
This IS life. And morbid as it sounds, none of us - not a one - are getting out alive. So I can freak out about the creaks and creases of old age. I can obsess over Shaw's articulation of wasted youth. But when it comes down to it, age isn't a number of which to be embarrassed. Those numbers are marks of victory. Proof we were here. Every wrinkle or scar a badge of honor. Signs of laughter, scraped knees. Cancer survival.
Every age has its pros and cons, and the more I meet, the more that means I've experienced along the way. So this 23-year-old's Resolution #1? Chill. Because none of us are getting any younger, but we do have the chance to get older. And maybe, just maybe, that's not so bad.


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"Leatherheads" is a few yards short of a win

The Screening Room
Specially Written for What's Up

It’s 1925, and college football is where the heroes live. Pro football is a thing of ridicule, filled with flask-slugging, cigarette-flicking screwuppery, punctuated every now and then with a touchdown.

This is the world of “Leatherheads,” a George Clooney “starring and directed by” picture show that’s filled with the nearly funny, but never quite buys a guffaw.

Clooney is Dodge Connelly, a 40-something pro football player who refuses to let his Duluth Bulldogs go down in eternal forfeit.

So he woos war hero and college pigskin favorite Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski, NBC’s “The Office”), who incidentally finds the idea of being paid to play an attractive one.

Fans flock, sponsors clamor and Dodge chalks up plenty of tallies in the win column, and for a while, things are the bee’s knees. They are pro football players, hear them score!

But when Chicago Tribune reporter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) gets a tip Carter isn’t the conquering war hero he claims he is, she sets out to chop down his cherry tree and trade it in for the assistant editor’s desk.

Carter and Dodge develop crushes on the whistle-blowing pen pistol, and so begins the film’s ultimate match-up: the Young Buck versus the Cunning Fox with Miss Blonde Ambition smack in the middle.

The story is full of cute comedy, but falls short of outrageous humor. Calmly hued in the colors of the ’20s, it’s like the movie isn’t sure which genre it’s supposed to fall into, and so it doesn’t land in any of them.

It’s a little bit comedy, a little bit sports. It’s like the Donny and Marie of romantic football cinema.

But Clooney and Zellweger’s repartee is pitch-perfect, and just about enough to carry the film through to its final sunset scene.

It also marks the story of football, set at a time when Pig in the Pokes and Crusty Bobs are traded in for new rules and a slew of big time corporate sponsors (picture the first-ever coin toss, where the referees aren’t sure who’s supposed to call what. At least no one calls them Friendo).

Never quite side-stiching, the movie is a quickly forgotten one, feeling a little more like pleather than the real thing. But it’s enjoyable none-the-less. Clooney injects his cheesy A-list charm in just the right amount to earn a little slack for lackluster laughs, and the witty — though sedated — humor is enough to leave audiences feeling like their team may not have won the game, but the valiant attempt was A-OK.

The Ruins weeds out the good stuff

The Screening Room
Specially written for What's Up

It’s common knowledge that horror films are not often ruined by their final scene. Instead, these cinematic scare-a-thons are usually poisoned much earlier on, by cheesy actors, poor writing or a budget so shallow even the most spine-tingling of intentions leave the audience doubled over in mocking glee after the reveal of a cartoonish-looking nemesis. It seems for every good one released, a hundred more are sent straight to Blockbuster’s ever-crowded shelves.

But when it comes to “The Ruins,” a tropically set fright flick that follows four 20-something friends on a journey to a deadly archaeological dig, no such excuses exist. The actors, many of them recognizable indie faves, are more than tolerable. The script is, for the most part, a different but decent adaptation of Scott Smith’s fearsome novel of the same name. And the setting is nothing new but surely nothing inconducive to a spooktastic celluloid experience.

But the ending? Without spoiling the not-so-fun, it is a cowardly cop-out of the cheapest variety not worthy of the silver screen.

Director Carter Smith tells the terrifying tale of Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), Amy (Jena Malone), Eric (Shawn Ashmore) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey), four WASPs on a Mexican vacation who make that predictably dumb decision to go on an adventure which sounds like fun but is obviously a storytelling sham to lead them to their untimely deaths. That’s right, one of those “Poltergeists don’t really exist, so we should definitely explore that dark and twisty mansion beneath the swirl of stormy clouds atop that deathly cliff. You know, the abandoned one no one has ever returned from alive?”

In this case, it’s an ancient, out-of-the-way hillside, set near a Mayan village deep in the jungles of Mexico. Trouble is, once they step foot on the vine-covered Ruins of no Return, those friendly neighborhood gun-weilding Mayans won’t let them step off of it.

Needless to say, their vacation goes from zero to grisly faster than you can say “martini with a twist.”

But the thing about their story is this: there’s no Norman Bates; no Hannibal Lecter; no Col. Mustard with the nunchucks in the billiard room.

Just a curse-bridled mound of dirt covered in the world’s most evil thicket, which wreaks havoc on the over-privileged, under-worked Spring Breakers Four.

Though its depiction tends to be a bit trippy (think a sea of green polka-dotted by red flowers vibrating and speaking in unison), Vinezilla is actually a successfully frightening antagonist, making you feel like one of its hellish tendrils might just crawl over the back of your theater seat and creep right into your ear canal.

It’s a startling and gruesome ride not for the mildly nauseous of heart, but this gardener’s nightmare that has viewers itching in their seats for all the right reasons leaves them exiting the theater stunned for all the wrong ones.

The movie lurches to a stop far too quickly and with a horrendous veer from the book’s original wrap-up, as if the filmmakers were trying to throw the audience a measly, unwanted bone. It takes a turn that sucks all the goosebumpish fun found in the book out in one single breath, a little like it’s your 11th birthday and you just got a hand-me-down pair of sneakers when what you really wanted was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comforter.

Total bummer, dude.

If you want to truly be haunted, the book is the way to go, but if you have the stomach to handle it and don’t mind a store-bought finish, buy the tickets, pop some popcorn and don’t forget your Roundup.

It's the end of the world as we know it

The Screening Room
Specially written for What's Up



Check your corners.

That’s one of the many things viewers learn after watching “Doomsday,” Neil Marshall’s deadly virus gore flick that hit theaters this weekend.

Other lessons?

You should never trust a furious quarantine zone survivor, and bad guys with mohawks are never really as hard to outrun as they seem.

Oh yeah, and don’t mess with Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra).

The girl’s got some issues.

“Doomsday” enters the overcrowded realm of contagion cinema with a bloody, bloody bang.

Just ask the cute little rabbit pulverized by a machine gun for venturing for some carrots too close to danger.

But despite taking a crack at an effort made many times over, “Doomsday” makes an impact, one with understated humor that leaves its audience jonesin’ for a car chase and a good cigarette.

It’s set in Great Britain in the near future, when much of Scotland’s population has been quarantined and left for dead after the spread of the Reaper Virus.

But years after the British government assumes the plague is dead and gone, it once again raises its ugly, bubonic head, this time threatening the whole of society, and Eden Sinclair is issued a challenge: Go back into the hot zone and find the cure, because P.S., we’ve been hiding the fact that there are survivors from this virus’ first graveyard go-round.

Eden and her crew venture across the quarantine border, where, surprise-of-all-surprises, a ragtag group with a bone to pick is happy to offer a bloody, bashing welcome.

What’s left of Glasgow has become a place of “social disorder,” better described as the breeding ground for drugs, sex and rock and roll. Oh yeah, and cannibalism, natch.

The survivors are led by Saul, one radical bad guy in a world of chaos, anarchy, fishnets and fire who at one point actually tosses plates to a hungry crowd in pure rock star fashion as they hoist a man above an oversized barbecue, tongues wagging for white meat.

(It was at this point a distinguished elderly couple excused themselves from the theater and did not return.)

But Eden isn’t intimidated by the Lost Boys gone wild, and she manages to find Kane (Malcolm McDowell), who is believed to have the key to outliving the plague.

“In the land of the infected, the immune man is king,” is Kane’s veiled “buzz-off” to Eden, so the born-to-be-bad powerhouse manages to travel between worlds of medieval warfare, post-apocalyptic raves, gas masks and marshall law, all the while leaving a series of awesome explosions and bloody body parts in the wake of one sick set of wheels.

In a genre where the killer disease is a widespread lack of ingenuity, “Doomsday” takes the bloody cake but, takes itself just seriously enough to make the audience’s time worthwhile.